Safe San Salvador

[Fantine]

We're planning a mission trip to Guatemala (I won't be involved--have a sick husband and can't leave him to his own devices for two weeks.

And so tonight I told my friend, "Please fly through Guatemala City, not San Salvador. I'm so worried about everyone's safety in that country--after all, look what happens in Russia, where people are arrested for being journalists."
Our mission site is closer to San Salvador than Guatemala City.
So my friend tells me, "I'm sort of afraid, too, but ________________ traveled there with her dad recently and said crime has disappeared. The downside is that heavily armed police are on every single corner."
I don't know about you, but if the price of getting rid of gangs is turning a country into a repressive police state, I don't think it's worth it.
And the scariest thing is that that could be my hometown--or yours--in a year. They're not after criminals. They're after democracy.

 

[FireDragon76]

Getting rid of the gangs was probably worth it for El Salvador, but the real danger is having a neighbor to the north willing to corrupt what began with good intentions and dire need. The Salvadoran gangs were making ordinary life unlivable in certain parts of the country (El Salvador).

 

[ozso]

San Salvador is probably safer than San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia etc.

Tour of San Salvador:

 

[Jermayn]

We're planning a mission trip to Guatemala (I won't be involved--have a sick husband and can't leave him to his own devices for two weeks.

And so tonight I told my friend, "Please fly through Guatemala City, not San Salvador. I'm so worried about everyone's safety in that country--after all, look what happens in Russia, where people are arrested for being journalists."
Our mission site is closer to San Salvador than Guatemala City.
So my friend tells me, "I'm sort of afraid, too, but ________________ traveled there with her dad recently and said crime has disappeared. The downside is that heavily armed police are on every single corner."
I don't know about you, but if the price of getting rid of gangs is turning a country into a repressive police state, I don't think it's worth it.
And the scariest thing is that that could be my hometown--or yours--in a year. They're not after criminals. They're after democracy.

I traveled to Honduras once and ended up in some pretty sketchy areas. Decided I'd just enjoy the beauty of the states after that.

 

[Fantine]

San Salvador is probably safer than San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia etc.

Tour of San Salvador:

,
But the question is whether society is really "safer" if there are "secret" police on every corner, where their redefined "crimes" are speaking out against the leader of the alleged "democracy."

50 years ago (long time I know) we went on a budget trip to Rio with our college alumni association. We explored everywhere with two other couples and one day took a detour from Ipanema Beach to the nearby favelas (slums where people lived in desperate poverty.) One of our friends started taking pictures and soldiers, seemingly materializing out of nowhere, walked up to her, grabbed her camera, removed the film and handed it back.

Police state tactics for sure.

So fast forward fifty years...some of my missioner friends are heading to Guatemala flying into San Salvador, where a ruthless and almost unbelievaby cruel dictator has imprisoned 70,000 Salvadorans and hundreds of American transplants into Gulag-style prisons. Are these police on every corner (or at the customs stations of the Guatemala/El Salvador border) thinking, "Why are these missionaries here? Will they report back to their home country what's really happening?"

And is this the model that our current president admires?

 

[Always in His Presence]

We're planning a mission trip to Guatemala (I won't be involved--have a sick husband and can't leave him to his own devices for two weeks.

And so tonight I told my friend, "Please fly through Guatemala City, not San Salvador. I'm so worried about everyone's safety in that country--after all, look what happens in Russia, where people are arrested for being journalists."
Our mission site is closer to San Salvador than Guatemala City.
So my friend tells me, "I'm sort of afraid, too, but ________________ traveled there with her dad recently and said crime has disappeared. The downside is that heavily armed police are on every single corner."
I don't know about you, but if the price of getting rid of gangs is turning a country into a repressive police state, I don't think it's worth it.
And the scariest thing is that that could be my hometown--or yours--in a year. They're not after criminals. They're after democracy.

I am trying to understand how one can equate the murder capital of the world being transformed by empowering law enforcement to do their job - openly uniformed and armed in public - can be seen plainly. How that action turns into the 'secret police' - then equated with our President who is actively reducing the size of the government, returning power to the states and individuals.

Is this any more than a strange unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?

 

[Fantine]

AIHP: I am trying to understand how one can equate the murder capital of the world being transformed by empowering law enforcement to do their job - openly uniformed and armed in public - can be seen plainly. How that action turns into the 'secret police' - then equated with our President who is actively reducing the size of the government, returning power to the states and individuals.

Unsurprisingly, the US is in the top ten for murder rates per 100,000 in 2023.

Murder Rate by Country 2025

worldpopulationreview.com

El Salvador wasn't on the list.

Our country's president is haphazardly reducing the size of government, returning expenses to the states and desperation to individuals. Do billionaires need another tax cut so badly that rural Americans have to live in health care deserts as their rural hospitals close?

 

[Say it aint so]

Getting rid of the gangs was probably worth it for El Salvador, but the real danger is having a neighbor to the north willing to corrupt what began with good intentions and dire need. The Salvadoran gangs were making ordinary life unlivable in certain parts of the country (El Salvador).

Interesting Substack article regarding Bukele and the MS-13:

El Salvador has suffered from gang violence, led by Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, following decades of civil war from 1979 to 1992. According to an indictment brought by the Eastern District of New York against thirteen MS-13 gang members in 2022, various El Salvadoran administrations since the war ended entered into a “truce” with MS-13, in which the gang agreed to reduce homicides in the city “in exchange for transfers to less secure prisons, improved prison conditions, conjugal visits, cash payments, and other benefits and privileges.” The “truce” came to a halt, however, in 2015 after the U.S. government, which wanted to curb MS-13’s activity in the United States and bring them to justice here, increased pressure on El Salvador to return to restrictive prison conditions for gang members and extradite some of them to the U.S. In retaliation for the “truce” being lifted, MS-13 increased its violence both in El Salvador and in the U.S. In fact, the first Trump Justice Department created a task force, called Task Force Vulcan, to crack down on MS-13 in the U.S. – which is what led to the federal indictment noted earlier.​

​

Enter Bukele. Bukele was elected in 2019, winning on a platform that promised to (once again) “crack down” on gang violence. But his party, Nuevas Ideas, began secretly working to gain the support of a critical group: Yep, MS-13. Bukele and his party negotiated with the gang to bring back the “truce,” which would include (according to the federal indictment) “financial benefits, control of territory, the ability to run the gang from prison, and the early release of gang members.” MS-13 also wanted assurance that they wouldn’t be extradited to the U.S., where they would face more punitive measures. (Having studied the drug cartels in Colombia, this was reminiscent of Pablo Escobar’s mantra, “Mejor una tumba en Colombia, que una carcel in los Estados Unidos” – which means, “Better a grave in Colombia than a jail cell in the United States.”) The same day Bukele’s party received a legislative majority in 2021, it removed the Attorney General and five members of the Supreme Court who had been working with the U.S. to take real action against MS-13. Buekele also released a major MS-13 leader whom the U.S. was seeking for extradition from prison.​

​

In exchange, MS-13 “agreed to reduce the number of public murders in El Salvador, which politically benefitted the government, by creating the perception that the government was reducing the murder rate.” Indeed, Bukele’s popularity is the result of his so-called “Territorial Control Plan,” which involved building his supermax prison and his plan of mass incarceration – a plan which he credits for the drop in violence since he took office. Of course, the citizens of El Salvador aren’t privy to the secret negotiations Bukele made with MS-13 – details that were going to be made public when the U.S. government’s case against the MS-13 defendants went to trial. Which may explain why the Trump administration quietly dropped these charges last week and put the charged MS-13 members on the third plane bound for El Slavador (and which included Abrego Garcia). Among the defendants was one of the highest-ranking leaders of MS-13, Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, who was arrested last June and added to the earlier indictment (and who almost certainly will not face real punishment in El Salvador). A former FBI agent who spent years working on this and other gang cases called it “a historical loss,” especially in terms of getting critical intelligence about MS-13’s operations and members in the United States.​

 

[Richard T]

Just let them go with God. They have nothing to fear. There were missionaries in the Congo during Ebola. I had friends who trucked aid to Mozambique and literally saw vehicles that were just riddled with bullets or on fire on the same roads during the civil war there.

I always liked Ps 16:6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Those lines are boundaries and God has expanded these for those called to new places. So I hope they see it as a pleasant place in God. Kind of like how Mother Theresa loved and saw Mumbai or other places in India in a wonderful way.

 

[Always in His Presence]

Our country's president is haphazardly reducing the size of government, returning expenses to the states and desperation to individuals.

incorrect - with reducing the size of the federal government - he is actually increasing the fund the states have from them because the bloated salaries and multimillion dollar offices don't have to come out of the funds anymore. The States will actually be better off - and that is what anti- democracy proponents hate -

Do billionaires need another tax cut so badly that rural Americans have to live in health care deserts as their rural hospitals close?

LONG LONG debunked -